Existing comment:
After Karl Bodmer, Alexandre Damien Manceau, engraver
Bison Dance of the Mandan Indians in front of Their Medicine Lodge in Mih-Tutta-Hankush
1842
hand-colored aquatint
The Bison Dance was part of the O-Kee-Pa ceremony, sacred to the Mandan. Although Prince Maximilian and Bodmer did not witness this rite themselves, the Mandan chief Mató-Tópe authorized a tribal elder named Dipäuch to explain and describe each element of the ceremony. Based on this account, Bodmer composed this dramatic scene after he returned to Paris in 1834.
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, Gift of the Enron Art Foundation, 1986.49.542.18 |